So now that Michael Flynn is cooperating with Mueller, is Trump the next to be charged? Not so fast says THIS expert

On Friday anti-Trump liberals and Democrats who have been lying…er, pushing…the narrative that Donald J. Trump and his campaign staff “colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton” were empowered once again when their hand-picked special counsel, Robert Mueller, got a guilty plea from the president’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn.

The retired three-star general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency when Barack Obama was still president pleaded guilty in federal court to a one-count criminal information charge, which is filed by a prosecutor in cases where a defendant has given up his or her right to be indicted by a grand jury.

Subsequent reporting noted that Flynn is now set to “cooperate” with Mueller, and is prepared to testify that Trump “directed him to make contact with the Russians.”

So the jig’s up, right? This is the ‘smoking gun’ that the Trump-hating swamp has been waiting for: ‘Proof’ that there was collusion and now Flynn is preparing to spill the beans…finally!

Oh, what a glorious Christmas for the Trump haters, right?

Not so fast. Far from it, in fact.

Writing in National Review Online, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who specialized in national security cases during his tenure at the Justice Department, explained that what happened Friday with Flynn was not only unremarkable, nothing implicates Trump or his campaign team nor moves us closer to the fake narrative that there was ‘collusion’ with Russia.

Explaining that Flynn lied to FBI agents four times — all of which are contained in a single count — there is still nothing to indicate the president or his closest aides have done anything illegal or even improper.

That said, “There was nothing wrong with the incoming national-security adviser’s having meetings with foreign counterparts or discussing such matters as the sanctions in those meetings. Plus, if the FBI had FISA recordings of Flynn’s conversations with [Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei] Kislyak, there was no need to ask Flynn what the conversations entailed.”

“Hence, there has always been cynical suspicion that the decision to interview him was driven by the expectation that he would provide the FBI with an account inconsistent with the recorded conversation — i.e., that Flynn was being set up for prosecution on a process crime,” he added.

That seems to be what happened. But ‘getting Flynn’ isn’t all it appears, McCarthy notes further. “While initial reporting is portraying Flynn’s guilty plea as a major breakthrough in Mueller’s investigation of potential Trump-campaign collusion with the Russian regime, I suspect the opposite is true.”

What would be an indicator that Trump was in trouble is if the cooperator (Flynn) “is made to plead guilty to the scheme,” McCarthy wrote — the “scheme” being ‘colluding with Russia.’

“This is critical because it proves the existence of the scheme,” the former federal prosecutor wrote. “That is not happening in Flynn’s situation.” He’s pleaded guilty to a “mere process crime.”

As for Trump directing him to talk to the Russian diplomat, “that…is exactly the sort of thing the incoming national-security advisor is supposed to do” in the administration’s transition phase, said McCarthy. And if that itself “were part of the basis for a ‘collusion’ case arising out of Russia’s election meddling, then Flynn would not be pleading guilty to a process crime — he’d be pleading guilty to an espionage conspiracy.”

If there was any quid pro quo between the incoming Trump administration and the Russians, Mueller would not be letting Flynn settle his case with a one-count plea of lying. “Instead, we would be looking at a major conspiracy indictment,” McCarthy noted, adding that Flynn’s plea is “small potatoes.”

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.